PADANG – Indonesians dug a pit for a mass burial in the earthquake-shattered city of Padang yesterday, while in nearby hills villagers with wooden hoes clawed in the mud in a near-hopeless search for hundreds entombed by landslides.
Rescue teams combing the rubble of Padang said there was little prospect of finding more survivors from a disaster that authorities say may have killed 3,000 people.
As relief workers pushed deeper inland from the coastal city, they found entire villages obliterated by landslides and homeless survivors desperate for food, water and shelter.
“I am the only one left,” said Zulfahmi (39), who along with 36 family members had been in the village of Kapalo Koto, near Pariaman, about 40km (25 miles) north of Padang, when Wednesday’s 7.6 magnitude quake struck.
“My child, my wife, my mother-in-law, they are all gone. They are under the earth now.”
Indonesia’s health minister, Siti Fadillah Supari, said the government now estimated that the death toll could reach 3,000, adding that disease was becoming a concern, especially in Padang city, where a pervading stench of decomposing bodies hangs over the ruined buildings.
“We are trying to recover people from the debris, dead or alive. We are trying to help survivors to stay alive. We are now focusing on minimising post-quake deaths,” she said.
In Padang, a port city of 900,000 that was once a centre of the spice trade, rescuers picked through collapsed buildings to look for perhaps thousands of people still buried.
Indonesia’s disaster agency said 20,000 buildings had been damaged in the quake, with most government offices destroyed.
Padang lies on one of the most active fault lines in the world. A geologist said the city had been ill-prepared for the disaster and remained at risk of being wiped out in the next decade by a more powerful quake, since its buildings were not quake-proof. – (Reuters)